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Kim Bodnia quits The Bridge

Series 3 of the acclaimed Swedish/Danish drama will feature Saga, but is a bridge too far for Martin

Hit Scandi thriller The Bridge has been officially recommissioned by Swedish and Danish TV – but one of the great partnerships in modern TV crime drama has broken up. Sofia Helin will return as Saga Norén but her screen partner Kim Bodnia has quit the show and will not appear as Martin Rohde.

Bodnia's character was – *spoilers* if you haven't seen series 1 and 2 – in a tight spot when we last saw him, under arrest for murder, with his partner Saga having deduced that he was the likely culprit in the poisoning of the man who had killed Martin's young son in the series 1 finale.

It seems Bodnia was unhappy with the way in which the show's writers wanted to resolve the situation. "We had different perceptions of the season's content," Anders Landstrøm of Swedish co-producer Film Lance told Sydsvenskan. "Bodnia was not happy with how the character evolved. It is a shame, but we must move on and accept it."

Large parts of the series 3 script will need to be rewritten by head writer Hans Rosenfeldt and his team, but according to Landstrøm: "The main story is intact."

The Bridge's Danish broadcaster, DR, confirmed that Bodnia has left the show and said the new series would see Saga Norén interacting with a new team of detectives.

"We still have a lot to tell about Saga Norén, and now we can also introduce viewers to exciting new characters in The Bridge's universe and develop their relationships with each other," Rosenfeldt said. "I promise that no one will be disappointed."

There's more bad news for Bridge fans: even if the writers manage to quickly retool their scripts, series 3 isn't planned to start filming until September and isn't scheduled to appear on DR1 and SVT until autumn 2015, which means it's unlikely to appear on BBC4 until late 2015 or early 2016.